That's the whole question. Is there a trick on how to do it or did the makers erase this featuer?

Check in the Material Room and make sure it's attached to the Background Node and that AutoFit is ticked.  I think that's what I had to do in P6 but I don't remember right off hand.

i checked. and didn't fix it. This is what happens. I know the BGpic is applied when i import a BG pic. The way i know is if i pass the mouse over the BG..i will get like a grid...you can't see the full picture..but the grid lines are visible for like 1 second and you can tell it's the BG pic. In p5, you wouldn't get this grid. i think the picture would just appear fully. yeah. and it wuld stay on the bground visible no matter what you did. but this doesnt happen in p6

I had all kinds of troubles trying to use a bg pic and finally gave up.. just map a plane as the bg.. works way better with no hassles.

And feed the background image into the Ambient input on your background prop. Then you don't get visible shadows.

Ok guys look. This is what i mean. It's in Preview mode. A BG Picture. and you can't even see it. it's just the edges..so you can see a tiny bit. like a grid. It happens with bg quicktime movies too. I usually do it in Textured Preview mode..but this was just an example of what i mean. In P5 you would see the full bg image and full quicktime bg movie , even in preview mode. That sucks that they changed this in p6.

by the way. using a square and applying an image to it works...OK,,,but it looks blurry and weird. that's why i thought the BG picture or BG movie was a better thing

Same thing happens with me. Does no one have an answer?

yes .. risk, in another post i found the answer Just change PREVIEW DRAWING from Open GL to SREED SOFTWARE. it fixes it!!!

YEP. THANKS!